White Suits, Shaved Heads
by Edamessiah
Summary: Life is hard enough for Russian immigrants in America, but during the Russo-American war, old Cold War tensions rise past their boiling point. For one man, though, the mafia could have what he's looking for: protection, money, and revenge.
1. Chapter 1

They shaved my head in March.

I'm starting here because this is, according to them, the rite of passage that makes you one of them. The white suit came free soon after, but it was the shaved head that identified me amongst their ranks, really. And my passport, I suppose.

But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's rewind.

It's 1985 and I'm without family or friends, unemployed, an illegal alien trapped in America. Just to clarify, America in the aftermath of the Russo-American war in the Pacific made Cold War America look like a fucking kid's show. On the day the war ended, protesters and patriots firebombed the block of flats me and some other Russians were squatting in. I lost a lot of friends – not even to the fire. The bastards were waiting outside, knowing we'd be flushed out like plague rats. They had bats, chains, bars or metal. We had nothing. I escaped, alone. I was 19, then.

I changed my name to something more local, combed through the works of Arthur Miller for something rife with Americana, settled on Eddie Loman. I buried my accent under an exaggerated East Coast surfer's voice I picked up day by day hanging out on beaches and in bars. I died my hair dark, hid everything Russian about me, dissolved into America like an incubating germ. And I survived. And I waited.

Just to make it clear, everything I did in the four years after that I did out of fear and hatred. Terror drove me into hiding and spite forced me to go on. I thought if I could survive under the radar in the USA I'd be winning somehow, even as I scraped together a minimum-wage living eating beans out of the can in a dingy shithole apartment in a tenement building. I thought I was winning. I thought my continued existence as a Russian national was the biggest 'fuck you' I could give the country in which I was trapped. How did I come to be here, you might wonder, me – a Russian national who, so far as you're aware, despises America and always has?

Rewind again. Let's go further back.

I'm 12 years old. Bright blonde hair, bright blue eyes, high-pitched voice extolling the virtues of everything I saw. I was an optimist. But pre-war Russia was not a good place to be such a thing. My parents berated and penalised me for my outlook. They hated Russia, you see, and I adored it. Eventually, they realised the stick wasn't going to work on me – my youthful patriotism

ran too deep – and turned to the carrot. They told me about America, a paradise with beautiful, sparkling seas and beautiful, sparkling people. They told me it was the greatest country in all the world, far greater than Russia. They told me we were moving there. I was impressionable, and trusting; I was filled with rapture at the prospect of somewhere that was somehow even _better_ than Russia.

The boat ride was long, but it was the only option; illegal immigrants and air travel simply did not go hand in hand. We must have been on the boat for weeks but to me it felt like a whole year of my life was spent in shipping containers and below decks, hiding from who-knew-what. I was curious as to why such a perfect country would require us to sneak in, but I didn't ask any questions. I was simply happy that we were going.

My father got a job as cheap labour in a construction yard; my mother as a maid in some California housewife's domestic palace. They worked mornings through to nights whilst I occupied myself in our tiny apartment. I had strict instructions not to leave, but I did anyway. I was utterly enchanted by the strange language spoken by these tall, incredible people. We lived not far from a beach, so I would walk down and marvel at the surfers with their tanned, sculpted bodies and the women in their two-piece swimsuits, with golden hair and perfect smiles. I was bewitched by the world of America, which to me was as far removed from Russia as the Earth from the Moon. And it went this way for a while.

Fast forward four years. It's 1982, and the day the war begins my mother is fired and my father is beaten to death by his own colleagues with bricks and hammers. They deliver his body to our doorstep, and since my mother is despondent at her sudden unemployment I'm the one who receives it. He was as mangled and broken as much as those patriots could achieve with their limited resources. It's not hard for me to imagine them encircling him, rage in their hearts and a perfect target for it in their midst, as he stammers pleas for mercy and appeals to their friendship. He knew these men. He'd met some of their families. Held their kids. Kissed their wives' cheeks.

His face was caved in after they broke his limbs and ribs.

My mother was catatonic with grief for weeks, and I quickly realised I'd need to find money or we'd starve to death. And what's more, we were known in the neighbourhood. Russians. The word was spat at me every time I left the flat, followed by threats of violence. One morning, I left the house to go beg for change. My neighbour, an obese man who'd said nothing to us the four years we'd been there, told me he'd rape my mother to death if she ever left the apartment. He told me he was listening for the door all the time, just waiting. I swore at him as he laughed all the way down the stairs.

I turned desperado, after begging failed to produce enough for us to keep going. Naturally. I lifted food from houses with open windows, smashed in store fronts and took what I could whilst the alarms blared all around me. By now I'd learned English well enough to threaten people into giving me money. I had a knife, and there were alleys and sidewalks I could stalk by night, picking out lone figures and hiding in the shadows from groups and gangs. And it worked, for a while. We didn't live in glamour, but we lived.

For a year, I kept my mother and myself fed and sheltered. The landlord was a decent man, understanding of our plight. He never kicked us out, even as the war turned in the Russians' favour. He knew it was nothing to do with us. He never told anyone he was housing Russians, nor would he tolerate violence in his building. And he never asked where the wads of money I would hand him each month came from. But he wasn't divine, and he couldn't save us from everything.

I returned one night from a smash-and-grab a few blocks away, stolen goods and the meagre contents of a cash register in my pockets, a knife stuffed in my boot. A discordant, broken wailing came from somewhere upstairs, but I thought nothing of it; this neighbourhood was no stranger to prostitutes, nor domestic abuse, and both were heard in abundance and duly ignored. But when I mounted the last step to our floor, I saw the open door to my apartment and knew immediately what had happened.

I stormed in. It was pitch black, but I navigated by noise until I found the bedroom where the door, normally locked, was half-shattered and wide open. There he was, the vile, corpulent form of our neighbour pinning my mother face-down to the bed with his arms and his sheer bulk. His trousers were at his knees, his legs glistening with sweat in the streetlight glow that came through the window. He grunted rhythmically. He called her a Russian whore as he fucked her. She cried. I cried, too, and I realised my teeth were clenched so hard they were in danger of cracking. I drew my knife from my boot.

"Get the fuck off her and look at me you fat piece of shit!" I shouted, grabbing him by the back of his shirt. He stumbled as I dragged him backwards, fell over, cracked his head on the wall. His cock was out, and I aimed a heavy kick between his open legs; he groaned, yelped.

"You fucking Russian, you fucking alien, I'll kill you, I'll fucking kill both of you!"

"Get the fuck up," I screeched.

"I'll gut you, I'll fucking gut you, I swear to God."

"Get the fuck up and look at me," I repeated. In Russian. I didn't mean to, but I'm glad I did. He rose to his feet, unsteady, winded from my kick. My mother's cries had subsided to muted weeping, her face buried in pillows. I looked at the man before me. He grinned.

I stabbed him in the gut, once, twice, so many times I lost count. He screamed and fought like a dying pig as I wrestled him to the ground, blood covering his shirt and my hands. When he was down, I pinned his arms below my knees and dropped the knife. I set my thumbs over his eyes. He was still screaming.

"Fuck America," I panted in English as I squeezed my thumbs into his eyesockets. "Fuck you, and fuck your whole piece of shit country."

He died crying blood.

My mother killed herself not long after that. I think my father's death and the trauma of that night were more than she could take. Mostly, though, I think she knew that with the war still going it would only happen again. Someone else would find us, hate us, try to hurt us. Someone else would come for her, and she couldn't stand the thought of that. She hung herself from the window of her bedroom – there was nothing else to hang from – and I understood. I grieved, and cried, and was alone. But I understood.

No police came for our neighbour, incidentally. I don't think anyone cared – possibly no-one even knew him. And no-one came for my mother, even as she bounced in the wind off the tenements walls. I pulled her in, closed her eyes, left her in bed. And then I was gone.

I found a place that a load of immigrants were living together, and for a couple of years I got by much as I had before, only now I had friends to help me. I met some guys from Russia, and they too had become handy at getting money by illicit means. We waited out the war like this – mugging, looting, extorting. All I wanted then was to go home, and I thought if I saved up money this way then I could buy passage back to Russia and have a little left to set myself up there.

I've told you what happens here, so I'll skip the details of those two years. Molotov cocktails rained in through the windows, followed by shouts and jeering, and we streamed out onto the street chased by fire and met by bludgeoning. I was pretty handy in a fight by now from more than a few muggings gone wrong, and I fought my way through the crowd, though not without injury. I lost everyone else.

I was homeless for a few months. All things considered, it wasn't as bad as it could have been: there were subways and sewers to sleep in, and with nowhere to be tracked down to I could be more reckless than ever with my crimes. People harassed me, but I didn't give a shit. I worked on my accent. Built an American identity. And, like I said, I waited.

And finally, after what felt like years, it all paid off.


	2. Chapter 2

I was begging on the streets – beggar by daylight, criminal by night tended to be my mode of operation. The California sun seared my eyes as I looked up at the passing crowds with despondency and desperation. I was ignored by almost everyone: a few strangers dropped a coin or two in a hat I'd set out in front of me, but it was fuck all compared to what I'd rake in from cash registers and anyone foolish enough to go out alone at night. I'll mention at this point that my views on the ethics of my livelihood were essentially amoral; I'd long since come to terms with the fact that others needed to suffer so I could survive, and I didn't care. As far as I was concerned, they were Americans and therefore deserved worse than whatever I could do to them. When I found a flag in a store I was robbing, I burned it.

Presumably you're also wondering if I'd ever killed someone – other than the rapist in my old apartment. And it's a point I've strayed away from, because if there's one thing that pulls at my guilt it's that. I couldn't give a fuck if some prick comes into his store and finds himself a hundred bucks lighter. But I've never felt good about killing innocent people, American or otherwise. Sometimes, though, it's necessary.

It's November, and the Pacific sun has disappeared behind a veil of clouds and ice for weeks. In Russia, we'd call this 'outdoors weather'. But unfortunately I'd acclimatised to warmer conditions – and to having shelter during its cold months – and so when Winter did come around I realised I was going to die. Squatting wasn't an option, because every abandoned lot was routinely torched and razed by nationalists trying to kill the immigrants residing there. Their job was one of purification, and, from their point of view at least, it was extremely effective. I don't like to think of how many people like me were bereft of shelter that one freezing Winter, and how many of them didn't make it to the other side. But I digress.

I'd been working on my accent and my appearance, like I said, and so unlike the others I had the advantage of appealing to the American desire to do his or her duty to his or her fellow Americans. It was cynical, but it worked: I threw my charms at a naïve-looking girl in a bar one night, and when she learned of my situation she unhesitatingly offered her apartment for as long as I needed it. This apartment was nothing fancy, but compared to everywhere I'd lived up to this point it was paradise. It had three rooms, including a spare one they weren't using that I had entirely to myself; every window was intact and secured; the halls outside the door weren't plagued by whores and violence. I thought I could get used to it, but unfortunately it wasn't to be so.

Her father, with whom she shared the place, was one of the nationalists I've mentioned before. When the girl went out to work and I stayed in, I had him for company, and it was the biggest test of my performance as an American I've ever had to endure. One slip out of my fabricated accent, one lapse into Russian, and he'd lynch me like a Salem witch. So I had to be careful – and perhaps even worse, I had to endure his opinions.

Nothing I'd heard before or since disgusted me as much as the things this man said to me. He'd make Goebbels cringe. Amongst other things, he said that every non-American, but especially Russians, were inferior and needed to be cleansed off the face of the Earth. Like any good American, he thought that nuclear fire was the best solution to this problem. I pointed out, as detached as I could, that Russia had nukes stockpiled just like America, and they'd retaliate immediately; he laughed, and said their nukes couldn't even reach us because they were poorly-made Soviet crap. He had no basis for this argument, but he was quite certain that the craftsmanship of Soviet engineers was too much lacking to make a proper ICBM. I don't know what he thought the Cold War was.

For the remainder of winter I endured his company and enjoyed his home, and entered a pleasant domestic relationship with the girl, who I found quite admirable after a time. She was a barmaid part time, and a dancer the rest. Not the kind you throw notes at; ballet was her craft. It didn't turn a profit, or in fact make any money at all, but that was what the bar gig was for and she had big hopes of performing in ballets across the world. She told me how much she loved the Russian ballerinas, how she looked up to them as the finest on the planet, and how it was such a shame that the war had soured Russo-American relations so much. That endeared her to me a lot: she seemed, amongst a nation of monsters, to be a perfectly decent and reasonable human being.

I don't need to tell you that this story turns sour.

It was cool evening when she left for her dance class. I gave her a long kiss before she went. At first, my affection had been as much of an act as the rest of it, but over Winter the ice on my heart had thawed enough to let her in, and now I held a considerable attachment to her. I liked her. We laughed together, knew each other as well as circumstances would allow, slept together (after a time I moved from the spare room into hers), went out when she had the night off and enjoyed what the city had to offer. On this evening, though, she had a late shift at the bar and so I was left in the miserable company of her father. I had the option to go out, of course – I was no prisoner – but there was nothing to do but be cold outside, and besides I always ran the risk of someone recognising me from one of my many narrow escapes as a criminal. So I stayed in, and tried to make as little contact and conversation as possible. However, it was a small apartment.

I reluctantly took a seat in the living room and settled down to watch TV with the girl's father. The smell of whiskey and beer poured off him; I could almost see a fog of belched and vapourised alcohol clouding the air where he sat. His eyes half-open, he watched the TV attentively. It was a news piece about a sleight of gang-related killings: some kind of Russian mafia was apparently taking root on the East Coast and spreading from city to city out of Miami. The news report showed a few blurry clips and shots of white-suited men bludgeoning people to death with clubs and bats. The videos were evidently recorded by them: they were tripod-mounted, and filmed in dingy rooms. As the reporter warned us of images that were unsuitable for those of a sensitive disposition, the TV cut to a stocky man fastened by his hands and feet to a chair. His head was flung back, his mouth agape, and there were wide gaps in his two rows of teeth. Blood covered his chin like he'd been feasting on a live animal, and a man in the background approached the camera and held up a pair of pliers to the lens, grinning: clasped between them was a bloody molar. The rest I didn't see, because my host chose that moment to throw one of the many empty bottles around him at the screen.

I think he expected the bottle to break, but instead it simply went all the way through the glass; a shower of sparks and glass erupted from the bulky television as a cacophonous _ksssshhh, BANG_ sounded all through the apartment. Smoke rose from behind the shattered screen. I gripped the chair arms in shock.

"God damn FUCKING RUSSIANS!" he bellowed, pounding his chair arms and knocking bottles to the floor. I wanted to leave, but who knows what he would have done then? And besides, I couldn't risk anything suspicious. I muttered agreement as sincerely as possible, which wasn't much. Anyone would have known it was half-hearted. And I knew I'd made a mistake. I knew I should have said nothing.

"You a fucking commie, Eddie? That it?" He heaved himself out of his chair, wiping foamy spittle off his mouth with the back of a big, hairy hand. In my head, behind my eyes, I saw those hands wrapped around my throat, saw myself in his eyes choking to death with shards of glass twisted into my face. I stuttered.

"No! Of course not, I'm an American like you, aren't I?!" He grunted, and I knew it was too late for that.

"I don't know that. I don't know _shit_ about you. Where do you even come from, huh? Where did your dad work? What state were you even born in?"

I had answers to these questions – fake ones I'd memorised a long time ago – but I knew they'd do me no good here. Standing up, I backed away cautiously, pained by the sensation of being prey.

"I think you're a fucking commie. That right? You part of this mafia they were talking about?"

"No!"

"You fucking _liar!_" he roared, grabbing a bottle and smashing it against the wall. The action made him unsteady, and he rocked for half a second before regaining his balance. Suddenly, he was charging me, and I threw myself to the side, dodging a downward slash. I caught myself on my chair, though, and fell to the floor face down. I had to defend myself. But he was massive, and I had nothing. So what, then?

He fell upon me, grabbed my shirt in a fierce grip, and plunged the bottle into my shoulder. I screamed, felt shards of glass cutting me under my skin as I contorted in pain, screamed again. I jerked an elbow backwards into his gut and rolled away through the space he left when he recoiled. I scrambled to my feet, my shoulder feeling like it was being devoured by insects with each and every movement. I wrestled my shirt off as I moved away from him, not eager to be ensnared again, and looked for the kitchen. There. I moved around the counter, putting it between us (he was up now, and headed my way) as I searched. The knife draw. I pulled it open, stuck my trembling hand in, came out with a fish knife. But he was already upon me by then, and he tackled me against the counter as I grabbed the knife. His shoulder was pinning me firmly, and my head took a hard hit on the way down. Everything was blurry and static rang in my ear as he reared up like a bull. His bottle was raised.

I threw my arm in a wide arc at his neck, and blood followed.

It showered me. He dropped the bottle and clasped his hands to his slashed throat, fruitlessly striving to stem the flow of blood that leaked through his chubby fingers. I pushed him back and stood up. I could call an ambulance but he'd be bone dry by the time they got here. He was dead, and vainly struggling to deny the fact. I stuffed the knife in my shoe (couldn't afford to leave it here, after all) and moved to the bedroom to begin packing the few things I'd acquired since moving in. I did so hastily, stuffing shirts and shorts into a sports bag, and prayed I wouldn't hear the click of the lock opening. I listened carefully, but nothing more than the wheezing, gurgling death rattle of my would-be murderer came. Zipping the bag closed, I thought I'd got lucky. I could leave, change my appearance, name, get out of the city – I knew that this was a step too far. There was no getting away with this without drastic measures, especially when his daughter knew me so closely. I would disappear, one more racist dead at my hands and the world slightly better off for it, as far as I was concerned.

But fate doesn't smile on us. Fate sneers and shits.

The door had been unlocked the whole time. I'd heard nothing as she came into the apartment, and emerging from our room I now saw the girl I'd come to love stood over her father's corpse, silent. She began to cry, and I tried to move to the door as stealthily as I could, hoping she'd be too distracted to notice me.

But if there's one thing our encounter had left in abundance, it was broken glass.

I stepped on a shard of the TV screen and it cracked under my weight. She spun around, her eyes glistening with tears and her brow twisting downwards with rage with every millisecond that she looked at me.

"You _bastard!" _she screeched as she rushed at me, "you bastard, you killed him! You fucking killed him!" I pleaded with her to calm down while I explained, but I don't think she was even capable of listening right then. Or maybe that's just me justifying my actions. Who can say?

"I'll kill you, I'll kill you! I hate you!" She kept screaming and shouting as she cried and hit me, hard punches across my face. Then she grabbed me by the neck, and I fought to prise her hands away but her grip was too strong, and the longer she held on the weaker I became. The edges of my vision went black as, second my second, she squeezed the life out of me. This was the closest I had come to death. And I had to do something.

She pushed me to the floor and down I went, on my knees, helpless to push back. I grabbed the knife in my shoe, jerked it loose, and flicked my arm upwards into her stomach.

I told you it went sour.

I apologised to her as she died on the floor next to me, rolling away and spluttering blood from the mouth I'd kissed so many times. I said sorry hundreds of times until I was saying it in Russian. It was just automatic, and my brain was still oxygen-deprived. And after she was dead, I kept on laying there, and kept on saying it.

Here's something interesting you might not know. 'Do svidanya' is Russian for 'goodbye'. But it more properly translates as 'until we meet again'.

So when I left, I just said goodbye.


	3. Chapter 3

If there's one point to this story whatsoever, it's that I wasn't born a thug. I had hoped, too, that I wouldn't have to die one.

But if there are _two_ points to this story, it's that we don't really get what we want.

I migrated to Florida, which seemed as far from California as I could really get. Police investigations of the apartment would reveal information about a man who didn't exist. My fingerprints were on no records, and I had no identification to speak of. Anyone who knew the girl would say she hung out with a guy called Eddie. And Eddies were everywhere.

My road to Miami was paved with stolen cash and long bus rides. As far as I could go at any one time, and always into the East. And eventually, I arrived with another new city to lose myself in. Miami in the eighties was a city of neon. It had a pulse. I could feel it throbbing, like I'd pressed my finger to the vein of the night itself. The air was like a drug trip, the sky like a palette, and every dawn and every dusk someone swapped out all the colours. I was ashamed at how beautiful I found it – but not classically beautiful, like a Renaissance gallery or the Colosseum of Rome. It was beautiful like watching the world die. I imagine I'd have had a similar sensation, looking at Miami, as I would have had watching a star collapse. Miami was the great self-harm scar of humanity, cut open to bleed all over again every night.

And this is how I came to be where I am. My system of ethics had collapsed. I mugged people, still, for more money than I could ever need and blew it on drugs. If it looked like they'd cause a problem, I'd kill them. Go to their apartments. Take everything they had. There was so much crime in Miami at this time that no-one could have ever established a pattern. I could have been one person or a hundred. High on pills, I wasn't even sure myself.

I fell in with a group. Kids like myself, sans the Russian heritage. We fell into hedonism hand-in-hand. Drank together. Got high together. Fucked together. The nights were long and the police were nowhere and when I was with them I could forget the shit I had to do to sustain it all. Then the next day I'd hold up a corner shop or mug a dealer, and that'd pay for the evening. It was cyclical. I was propping up the bare minimum. I melted in front of mirrors: bass thumped through bare-brick walls while I snorted through a bleeding nose and I looked at my reflection in the fluorescent light and I kept on staring because there was no-one there. I felt if I touched the glass I'd fall through. I think, at some point, I must have done just that.

I fell in with one of them. A boy named Josh. Kind of a pretty boy, with big eyes and a soft jaw. He and I were the only ones who dated in our group, though not by daylight. I must have had a type, because he reminded me of the girl from California: he was sweet, and trusting, and didn't ask me about where I'd been or what I'd done. But he wasn't ambitious like her. He believed his life was as good as it was likely to get, and he was happy with it – or at the very least complacent. And for my part, I was happy with him, for a time. We shoot up together, pulling each other's tourniquets tight. When we were high we'd fuck and then we'd sleep it all off and wake up feeling like car crash victims and laugh that off too. But it was always a little sad. Every time I'd laugh a little bit weaker and he'd smile a little bit less. A fragment of the experience had crumbled away while we weren't looking and eventually we were holding a pile of dust. He didn't share my perspective, though.

"I don't know if this is enough," I said to him on one particularly bleak night. He squeezed my hand, and then pulled my face up to look at his.

"We have everything," he said, kissing me. "We have everything there is."

He was placid, but he wasn't passive. The killings that made everyone else so scared made him angry. He hated being made to feel like a victim, and it was from his lips that I first heard the name '50 Blessings'.

"They're nationalists," I said, trying to talk him down. "They don't want what's best for you or us, they just want... fucking genetic purity, and shit like that."

"But they're the only ones _doing _anything, Ed. Am I supposed to just wait to be picked off by the fucking Russian Mafia? In _Miami_?! That's no way to live, and you fucking know it." It was hard to argue, especially when everything he said hurt me as much as it did. He was the only one to whom I'd ever considered telling the truth. Before, I'd felt almost ready to stop being Eddie Loman and start being me again, but every time 50 Blessings was mentioned it just hammered another nail into the coffin of my former self. He was unshakeable, and I was worried about what measures his zeal would drive him to.

It wasn't until after a couple of years that I met the Mafia, by the way. I'd managed to avoid them but I guess my luck ran out. They were tall, stocky men in immaculate white suits and blue shirts, all with heads shaved like an order of monks. They blocked my path as I left the house one morning. I was the only person awake, the others sleeping in a pile like a mass grave and I doubted any of them could have helped me anyway.

"Look at this one, he's up early. Early bird, huh?" One chided me, jabbing me lightly with a crowbar so that I staggered back. I said nothing. "Where you going so early, birdie? Maybe you go back inside, go back to sleep." My hand was on the door handle, and I thought 'why shouldn't I just go back inside?' I had nothing to do with them and it wasn't me they were here for. But then again, I didn't imagine they were worried about collateral damage when they did whatever they had in mind. I had to do something. Let them know I wasn't an enemy.

"I'm getting out of here before you torch the place is what I'm doing," I said quickly in Russian. A few eyes widened; my disguise must have been pretty good after all. "Are you going to stop me or let me go?"

The first of them didn't like being talked back to, because he wasn't sneering anymore when he said "No, we're not. Maybe we don't like the look of you coming out of here. Maybe you've been in America for too long, got friendly with the locals. Maybe _you_ burn this house down. Then we let you go." I stared at him unblinkingly as someone swung a jerry can and a lighter into my hands. Panic ran through my body. This had been my home for so long I'd forgotten anything else, and its inhabitants were my friends. I could warn them, but what then? They'd panic, try to flee, and we'd all be clubbed to death as we fled like some kind of ironic reanactment of the squatters in California. But they might as well have been asking me to drench myself in kerosene and swallow fire.

I settled on a compromise. Blood would have to be spilled, there was no way around that, but some could be spared. Or just two. I sighed through my teeth, and responded to the leader. "No problem at all." I disappeared through the door with the gasoline and closed it firmly behind me.

Josh was halfway to falling out of our bed when I shook him awake.

"The fuck, Ed? Is the sun even up?"

"We have to go. Now. Right the fuck now, get dressed and grab what you can and get out of the window."

"Funny guy," he murmured, eyes closed.

"I'm not fucking kidding. Grab your shit and get out the back. The Mafia are here."

He bolted upright like I'd tased him in the spine. "They're fucking _what?_" Trying to scramble to his feet, he hissed, "get a club, we'll fuck them up, come on!"

I held him down by the chest, and only then did he see the jerry can. "There's too many of them. I have to burn this place down or they'll kill you and me and everyone else. I can't explain more, please, just-" I choked on my words. At this point, I was waiting for this nightmare hallucination to disappear. But it didn't. "Just go, I'll meet you later but you have to go."

"What are you... you're burning it down? You're gonna do their fucking work _for _them?"

"If you want us to survive this? Yeah. I am."

"Ed, this is too far. Just drop it and come with me."

"They'll burn it down anyway. Then they'll find us and prove their point. This is the only way any of us get out alive."

"You can't do this!" He cried as loud as he dared, exasperated. The betrayal in his eyes must have been part of this schizophrenic delusion I was experiencing. I couldn't fathom it any other way.

"I can't _not_ do it! Now get the fuck out of here!"

Josh was about to argue but I turned away, and that must have done it for him. He threw a shirt on as I doused our possessions in noxious splashes of gasoline, soaking everything. By the time I was done with the room, he was gone. I'd hoped he'd wake the others, but they were still there by the time I was finished. I tried not to think about them scrabbling for scalding-hot door handles as smoke poured through cracks in the doors while I was sparking the lighter.

When I emerged, it was accompanied by a billowing cloud of smoke, which I promptly shut the door on. I reached for the leader's crowbar and he let me take it, evidently quite shocked. I jammed it between the bottom of the door and the frame. It wasn't going to open easily. Under my breath, I muttered an apology to the still-sleeping occupants of the party, before turning to the circle of gangsters. "Can I go now?"

One of them leaned in to their leader and muttered something I didn't quite catch, and the other nodded contemplatively. "Change of plans, I am afraid. You will be coming to the van. Perhaps there is more you can be doing for us."

An hour later, I found myself in the grandest building I'd ever seen in my life. Marble columns lined the entrance hall, and in what I can only assume was the office, two fountains adorned a glass floor. I was sat opposite an eccentric group of people: chief amongst them was an imposing man with thick, long black hair and an expression that left him looking like he was constantly trying to hold in vomit. Next to him stood a tall, eccentrically dressed woman with her hand resting on a Japanese sword. Her hair was tied up in a tight, almost vertical ponytail, like blood from a nicked artery. On his right could have been his doppelgänger: a younger version of himself, wearing the uniform white suit rolled up to the elbows and eyeing me with the same pained expression. His ponytail was more like a slashed vein; loose, flowing. I felt like I'd stumbled into a dream, but the gun on the table kept me from objecting.

"Our boys here tell me you know your way around an arson, son," barked the seated man so suddenly I almost jumped. His voice was authoritative, and everything he said was snapped out like he was cutting planks with his tongue.

"He's a fucking junkie. Look at him, father. I bet he doesn't even know how he got here. Are we gonna recruit anyone with an accent and a book of fucking matches now?" This came from the man's right. I noticed now that this son of his had red fingerless gloves with the Soviet hammer and sickle on them. His knuckles were bruised and scarred.

"Quiet!" barked his father, never taking his eyes off me. They were pinned open. The whole time I sat there, I don't remember seeing him blink once. "What's your name?"

I told him. My real name, that is.

"You've had it rough, haven't you?" I was on the verge of nodding, before considering that this was a trap. Thankfully, he spared me the difficulty of deciding. "Of course you have. Every fucking Russian in America has had it rough, that's why were here. That's why I'm here, and that's why you're here, isn't it?" Again, his rhetorical question nearly tricked me. I had yet to say a word other than my name.

"Has he even _killed_ anyone before?" This came from his son, who was evidently not a fan of me. His father didn't interrupt him this time, though, and waited a second before saying, "have you?"

"I've killed plenty of people."

"With your hands?"

"Sometimes."

"Americans?"

"Yes."

"Russians?"

"No."

He leaned back, considering me. This was not as relaxed a gesture as I make it sound. He was hunched forward aggressively, his expression still pained and still on the edge of _something_, so sitting back for him seemed to be a case of reverting to what other other people would consider a fairly upright position. After a while, I became aware that no-one was talking at all, and that I should probably say something.

"Look," I said as inoffensively as possible. That's not saying much; I was terrified, but increasingly irate at what I felt was a considerable waste of my time. "I don't know what kind of operation you're running here. And you might recall I didn't exactly seek you out." I was interrupted here by the woman sliding her hand from the pommel of her sword to the grip.

"Careful," she said quietly. I continued.

"I don't know what you're doing, and I don't know what you want with me. I've done far too much myself to go squealing to the Miami PD if that's what you're worried about. So if that solves anything, I'd really like to be going."

If he'd listened to anything I said, he wasn't interested in responding to it. "What would you say it is we do here?"

I shrugged. "You kill Americans?"

"Very astute. That doesn't make a lot of money by itself, though. What do you think pays for... all this?" He swept his arm around in a small arc, inviting me to look at the furnishing.

"Drug pushing. Arms dealing. Extortion."

"Three for three, well done. One more question. _Why _do you think we're doing this?" This caught me off guard. Criminals didn't tend to have underlying objectives, as far as I was aware, and it certainly seemed like the money was considerable enough to warrant a motivation all on its own. "I don't normally ask recruits that one, but I'm eager to see if you can guess. Or perhaps infer it, if you've been paying attention."

I did think I could piece some things together. There was definitely something nationalist about it: the uniforms, the hammer and sickle on those gloves, the chattering in Russian.

"Because you hate America, and you want them to be scared. You want to finish what the war started."

He smiled. "Got it in one. I have an offer for you now. You can refuse it – though I wouldn't recommend you do – and I won't ask again. But I'd rather you take it. I'm good to my men, and I'll see you paid well and satisfied. But I know it's about more than money for you, and that's what we can give you: purpose. Nationality. The chance to be Russian again. When was the last time you gave anyone your birth name, before today?"

I thought about it. "Years ago. More than a decade. I'm not sure."

"Too long. What did you say you'd been calling yourself?"

"Eddie."

"That's not you, is it?" His question was sympathetic, but not pitying.

"No."

"Work for me. You'll do well amongst us, you'll never answer to another American for as long as you live, and no-one will ever call you Eddie again."

He'd already made it clear I didn't have a choice. But I think in that moment, it wouldn't have mattered if I did.

He extended his open hand across the table, his eyes never leaving mine.

It was a long time before I saw Josh again after that.


End file.
